Wednesday, May 7, 2008

He Likes To Make A Livin' Runnin' 'Round

I have the Country Boy Albert Lee instructional video out from Netflix, and I have had it for a while, because I haven't had the time to sit down with guitar, amp and DVD player and get it into my hands yet. Parts are in my head, to be sure, and those parts will continue to be useful, but they're not in my hands where they can be useful.

Or something close to that. Floyd's piano is one of the few bits of countrypolitan that I can dig. It's a guitar hammer-on style that Floyd borrowed for guitar, so it's OK that we take it back. The central deal is on the G string, a hammer-on from the second to the major third. And of course it sounds more Floydish if it's up higher.

I also got Fallen Angel, a biographic documentary of Gram Parsons. It's really interesting. You get his family from Florida going into all the detail of the home life he ran away from, Chris Hillman wanting so hard to say nice things about Gram the artist but always going back to his barely-contained contempt for Gram the flighty druggy Keith wannabe, and the back and forth between Phil Kaufman and everyone who hates him and thinks he's a putz.

What really made me stop and rewind was the passing mention of Clarence White. Regular readers of this blog will know that mentions of Clarence White will always make me stop. And since his death and funeral, Gram's singing "Farther Along" and making a pact with Phil are crucial to the story of Gram's death and cremation, it kinda has to be there. I wish there was more. And I wish there was video of the country rock super-tour with Clarence and Gram and Emmylou ending the show together. And, really, I wish that Clarence was never hit by a drunk driver. Less sure with Gram; if he never died, would Emmylou have blossomed into the incredible artist she became? And if it wasn't that night in Joshua Tree, wouldn't it have been some other night at some other place?

Anyway, upside is, the one that came most recently is going back so that my eldest can get a Jimi documentary for a school report, and the one I've been sitting on will stay at home.

Not sure why CW would be a better pick than GP. He kinda has a biopic with Grand Theft Parsons, but I think he'd be the pick.

Nothing against Lowell and Little Feat.

I was big into 60s stuff without knowing who he was and idolizing people like Jeff, Eric, Jimmy, Jimi and Duane, and the more I hear Clarence, the more I think he is on that level and his name should be mentioned in the same breath.

Netflix has a crazy number of instructional vids. Not why we started getting it, but they're there and they're great.